TESTIMONY

Cameron Maine: A Divine Romance

By Kara LavengoodThe 700 Club

CBN.com
 “I think I had a pretty good childhood. My mom did an excellent job of loving us and giving us all that she could.”

Cameron Maine was a happy little girl. Her mother loved her and taught her early on about God.

She tells The 700 Club, “I had a really strong connection with God, I think. I gave my life to Christ as a child, getting baptized when I was five.”

The strong connection she had with her mother couldn’t make up for one important relationship she didn’t have.

“My dad left when I was four,” Cameron explains. “At the time, I didn’t really know what was going on, but I remember missing him a lot and being a little envious of kids who had their dads around. I didn’t realize how much that would affect me until later.”

When Cameron was in middle school, her mom remarried. Cameron didn’t like the new household dynamic.

“I wasn’t used to sharing my mom. It made me a little jealous.”

She decided she’d find attention outside the home.

“The attention I was getting from guys started to accumulate, and I really like liked it,” Cameron says. “So I just started to basically shy away from God, shy away from reading my Bible, and just consumed myself with worldly attention and affection. I started wanting to go to parties with people that were much older than me. When my mom would say no, I would basically throw a tantrum, cuss her out and sneak out on my own. I did that a lot in high school.”

At 13, she began dating a senior in high school.

“I think I became sexually active when I was in my early year of being 14. It was just something that I justified because I thought I loved him.”

After he graduated, Cameron’s boyfriend joined the military and ended their relationship.

“That’s the first time I experienced a really huge depression,” she recalls. “I found no pleasure in anything except for getting drunk or high and getting attention from new guys -- giving myself up to anybody who would give me the time of day.”

When that didn’t work to ease her pain, Cameron attempted suicide.

“I hit rock bottom,” she says. “Everything I was trying to fill myself with wasn’t working. I [was] really beating myself up on the inside, thinking I wasn’t good enough.”

She and her boyfriend eventually got back together. For a while, things got better, and they even got engaged. But then, during her senior year of high school, Cameron learned her fiancé had secretly married another girl.

She says, “When I heard that, my face got hot, and I felt like my heart was ripped out of my chest. I felt like my world came crashing down. I’ve never felt emotional pain like that before.”

One night at a party, Cameron consumed a lethal amount of drugs and alcohol.

“I seriously don’t know what was going on inside my body, but I felt like I was going to die and nobody knew I was missing. Nobody even cared. I just laid there and thought, ‘Oh man, am I going to die? This is the first time I might actually die, and I really don’t want to.’

“Being so scared, I closed my eyes. I couldn’t really talk, but in my heart and my mind, I cried out to God for help. It was really short. It was one sentence: ‘God, please help me.’ I remember closing my eyes and passing out.”

Cameron woke up a few hours later. She went home and did something she hadn’t done in a long time.

“I found my Bible in the basement,” she explains, “and I started reading it. God started speaking to me really clearly through His Word. I was starting to look back and recognize why I was trying to consume myself with all this attention.”

She realized that God could give her the love she’d sought from men.

“I had that romance with God for the first time,” she says, smiling. “It was like having a new boyfriend but way better -- a bazillion times better. You know that He’s perfect, and He’s never going to let you down.”

At 17, Cameron made a new commitment to Christ.

“God, since that point, has blessed me beyond understanding. I don’t even understand why He’s blessed me so much. He’s given me a great husband, and He’s blessed me tremendously with an awesome family and wonderful children. That one decision that I made to follow Him and to give Him my heart changed the course of my entire life.

“I really encourage girls out there who feel a loss in their hearts. They really try to fill it with guys and booze and drugs. There’s a God out there. He loves you. He wants to love on you and to have that divine romance with you.”